She never felt sorry for herself, and that was something I decided I admired most in people.

It's so much of what art and creativity are, being able to confront your own demons. If you can do that, you can get through just about everything.

You're in a horse race but you're thinking like a sheep. Sheep don't win horse races.

But no matter how much planning you do, one tiny miscalculation, one moment of distraction, can end it all in an instant.

Life's too short to care about what other people think. Besides, they should accept us for who we are

Sometimes something catastrophic can occur in a split second that changes a person's life forever; other times one minor incident can lead to another and then another and another, eventually setting off just as big a change in a body's life.

I wondered if the fire had been out to get me. I wondered if all fire was related, like Dad said all humans were related, if the fire that had burned me that day while I cooked hot dogs was somehow connected o the fire I had flushed down the toilet and the fire burning at the hotel. I didn't have the answers to those questions, but what I did know was that I lived in a world that at any moment could erupt into fire. It was the sort of knowledge that kept you on your toes.